Iranian Court issues first death sentence in Protest-linked cases

A Court in Tehran has issued the first death sentence to a person involved in Iran’s ongoing protests and handed out prison terms to several others.

The Iranian judiciary said late on Sunday that an unnamed individual has been sentenced to execution for “setting fire to a government centre, disturbing public order and collusion for committing crimes against national security” in addition to “moharebeh” (waging war against God) and “corruption on Earth”.

Five more unnamed people, who authorities described as “rioters” – a word the government uses to describe the ongoing protests and those participating in them – were handed between five and 10 years in prison on national security-related charges.

The judiciary noted that the sentences were preliminary and would need to be confirmed by an appeals court for them to be considered final and for details to be made publically available.

The judiciary had previously said that more than 1,000 indictments have been issued in Tehran alone, with hundreds more brought against people arrested across the country.

The first public courts related to the protests were held in late October in Tehran, with leading members of the political establishment calling for fast-tracked courts to punish “rioters” and deter further protests.

Last week, the majority of the members of Iran’s parliament also called on the judiciary to “deal decisively with the perpetrators of these crimes [the protests] and with all those who assisted in the crimes and provoked rioters”.

The protests began in mid-September after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was arrested in Tehran by morality police for alleged non-compliance with the dress code imposed by the state.

The protests have continued amid ongoing internet restrictions, while the third anniversary of the country’s November 2019 protests approaches later this week.

Those protests erupted across Iran after an overnight tripling of petrol prices and were accompanied by a total internet shutdown that lasted nearly a week.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the LatestLaws staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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